Wednesday, November 03, 2010

This Saturday, November 6th at 4pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) I'll be giving a talk at San Francisco Zen Center's Zen Translation Forum as part of a program titled Dogen: Lost and Found in Translation. The program will be streamed live on the web starting at 2 pm PST with an introduction by Steve Stuckey, Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center.

The URL for the live stream is http://www.livestream.com/sfzc. The live stream will also include presentations by Mel Weitsman, Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, a panel discussion led by Steven Heine and including William Bodiford, Taigen Dan Leighton and Susan Moon. There will be further presentations by Frederike Bossevain, Gaelyn Godwin of Houston Zen Center, Chozen and Hogen Bays and a live calligraphy auction by Kazuaki Tanahashi.

It should be fun. My presentation is titled "Dogen for Punks." It should stick out like a sore thumb among all the serious, scholarly stuff.

They're going to try and open it up to questions from the on-line audience. So try your luck and see if you can get through. My talk is going to be pretty short. So I suggest you get your comments in early.

After San Francisco I'm heading south to Los Angeles where I'm doing a busload of gigs.

A lot of times when I talk about Zen to audiences made up mainly of people who don't know anything at all about Zen, I have to deal with deeply held misconceptions of what Zen is. Just last week I gave a talk in which I didn't even once mention the concept of non-attachment. When I started taking questions a guy said, "You're talking about detachment and I don't agree that people should try to be aloof and detached with no personal relationships. I think personal relationships even of a sexual nature can be very nurturing things that all human beings need, etc., etc."

The point I'm trying to make here is that even though I said nothing at all about having an aloof, detached attitude, this guy had heard a few things about Zen, assumed it was all about being detached, and went after me for what he perceived I was talking about. Although the subject had not come up at all, everything he heard from me was filtered through that lens.

It's interesting how this happens and it will probably be my life's work to untangle all the misconceptions of Zen practice I run into. I came across a book just the other day that said, "Surely the Buddha was right that love is the fountainhead of hurt and misery, suffering and despair. He also taught that life and love were not worth while." Oh boy!

Not that I'm the ace genius who knows the be all and end all of Zen. But some of the misconceptions out there are so vast and deep! Sometimes these misconceptions even lead people to think they can become Enlightened® in an hour...

From the link: "Join us here this weekend for a special gathering celebrating the release of Dogen Zenji's masterwork, newly translated by Kaz Tanahashi, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Shobo Genzo." I like Tanahashi's "Moon In A Dewdrop" and "Beyond Thinking" but I don't think I'm ready to spend $94 for the whole Shobogenzo. Amazon says that it's not available until July 2011 so maybe I'll either have a job by then or be ready to become a wandering homeless monk. I could use it as a pillow when I wasn't reading it.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

Also I was wondering why you don't like John Daido Loori's 300 koan Shobogenzo... I have heard you poo-poo it and I just wanted to know what you didn't like about it - I thought it was a pretty standard koan collection like Gateless Gate or Blue Cliff Record... it was a fairly interesting read though a bit over my head.

I really, really liked Loori's Zen and Creativity book. One of my music teachers was a student of his and one of my musical heroes (Gary Peacock) was a student of his.

but...

His version of Shinji Shobogenzo kind of sucks. The translations of the stories are awkward and the language of the commentary is written in such a way as to seem like it is translated from an ancient zen text, just like the actual translation. It is misleading and needlessly confusing. I think he missed the point.

The Nishijima, Luctchford, Pearson translation is much better, especially the commentary. If Loori's translation "went over your head", I would encourage you to check out this version. This is the version that Brad references in Sit Down and Shut Up.

I understand what you are saying, but Sanbo-kyodan folks and Rinzai folks would probably say the same thing when a Soto tries to talk about the meaning of a koan...Yes, at the end of the day, after reading a Soto study of a koan I would have(no doubt)a really good understanding.... but, I don't know if the understanding of the koan would help much in dokusan with a Rinzai/Sanbo - Kyodan teacher you know...

The most my "understanding" would get me would probably be a smile and a ringing of the bell for me to leave the dokusan room...:)

The Loori translation gives me the Zen Creeps too (the commentary seems a bit contrived), but it's good to have to compare/contrast with Nishijima/Luetchford/Pearson, and there's much of merit in it IMO.

I forgot - JDL not only gives his own Capping Verse for each Koan, but also a Commentary and notes - all in standard Zen-speak. If it works for you, as a lone reader, without JDL to engage with in RL dokusan, fine. But I can't help wondering what nets and cages Loori's readers are being encouraged to ensnare themselves in while they sit at home pondering all this second-hand crypto-zen.

Brad told me about Loori's translation before I saw it myself. I don't want to speak for him, and if you really want him to answer your question directly you can email him, however he told me something similar to what I wrote above. I respect Brad's opinion when it comes to Dogen but, as I wrote, I really liked the one book of Loori's I'd read, so I wanted to see for myself.

I think calling this a sectarian disagreement is a cop-out and ignores the substance of the argument either way. Maybe it is a sectarian disagreement, but why? Regarding what?

Brad, what I would do about the phenomenon you were relating to, which you might quite likely guess I liked the mentioning of, is to open a talk by referring just to that. I don't know when and where you talk, (else then on SFZC, I hear you got some discussion with a guy by the name of Garry or Barry Birkham or something on Saturday - about Zach's BT I think, or maybe I got it wrong, never mind really) and how practical this is, but if you can make people see this, - in a way this may be the most essential thing for a start. No?

Else - now you're one with all the people you don't want to be one with. (Genpo included)

proulx michel said:"From all I've heard, SK and Rinzai koan dokusan are based upon a standard book of answers..."

As a SK practitioner, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that what you heard is false.:)

There was published in the 60's-70's (not sure about the date) a book with "answers" to the koans in the Gateless Gate"... And for the koan Mu, the answer was to respond to the question by taking a big breath and yelling "MUUUUUU!!!" Back in those days it was an inside joke as to who read the book... because people would have to stifle laughter whenever they heard a faint yell of MU coming from the dokusan room... followed immediately by the ringing of the bell.:)

As far as Koan study... and memorizing answers is concerned, I think that's a Soto thing... As in the Shuso dharma combat ceremony for instance...

mtto said:"I think calling this a sectarian disagreement is a cop-out and ignores the substance of the argument either way. Maybe it is a sectarian disagreement, but why? Regarding what?

Regarding the very different ways that the SK/Rinzai folks view koans as opposed to the way Soto folks view koans... Soto folks look at koans as something to study, like class type stuff... there is a meaning, you figure out the meaning, talk about it, go to the next one. It's like a history and a philosophy class mixed up.Rinzai/SK folks take up koans as something to practice in zazen, to identify personally with the koan... To use to realize their "true nature"...

So when Soto folks hear Rinzai interpretations of koans... they get all ruffled up, because they think Rinzai/SK folks are deluded.

And Rinzai/SK folks hear Soto folks intellectualizing koans, and they roll their eyes and think that they missed the point altogether.

In a suicide girls article from 2008, Brad wrote about Barry Graham amongst a group of recommeded zen centers. Here is the suicide girls article: http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/23057/

"SITTING FROG ZEN SANGHAPhoenix, ArizonaI’ve never been here either, but Rev. Dogo Barry Graham, its founder, has been a penpal (e-mail pal?) for several years and we hung out when I visited the Arizona Zen Buddhist Society a while back. Barry maintains a very cool blog too. He tells really good dirty jokes."

Nor was Dogen’s Soto Zen not influenced by Chinese Zen, especially Silent Illumination in which sitting dominates, a practice not found in the Buddhist canon and one especially criticized by other Chinese Zen schools. In many respects, one can say of Dogen’s Zen it is a departure from the Buddhism found in the Pali and Mahyana canons. The assertion by Dogen that “Death and life are the very life of the Buddha” is not something the Buddha ever said nor implied.

...or that Brad knew of anything non-kosher about BG back then...or that Brad remembers his 32-month old suicide girls recommendation, one of eleven in that article...or that Brad needs to apologise for it now.

Let's jump to a few more conclusions. And let's extend the witch-hunt to anyone who has heard of BG and hasn't denounced him. What fun we'll have! What good we'll do!

Uhhh.... Kevin just said the whole thing was "not adding up" - direct your snide remarks to the anons.

(and to the anons who didn't respond with a snide remark, the above was not directed to you.)

Sorry guys, but doesn't anyone else think it a little ironic that Kevin is doing EXACTLY what Brad said.... you gotta do your OWN homework on a prospective teacher... and in the course of his homework collecting all the info on Barry Graham he finds an endorsement by Brad about Barry Graham!

It's All in Your Head: A Meditation on Blaming the Victim as a Spiritual Practice

Thinking your thinking shifts the universe in any significant way is silly. Until you tell someone else their thinking led to their distress. Then it becomes evil.

A hard word. But the right one.

And it doesn't matter who tells you otherwise. New Age pundit. Zen Buddhist teacher. They say you create the universe inside your head in some literal way, and they're full of fecal matter, spouting the great brown stuff out of their mouths.

No. I did not remember listing Sitting Frog Zendo on a Suicide Girls article.

This is why I no longer recommend Zen teachers. At that time (and now) people were always asking me where they should go to study Zen. As I have said about a zillion times here & in books & elsewhere, I'm really not connected with the Zen scene. I only know a handful of teachers well.

I'm guessing that the Brad Warner who existed two years ago was doing his best to try to accommodate all those "where should I study Zen?" questions and come up with a list. He included Mr. Graham because he had a passing acquaintance with him and, at the time, the guy seemed all right.

What I said about Sitting Frog and Barry Graham is the sum total of everything I knew at the time. I think that's pretty clear in the listing.

As George W. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." In other words, having been burned like this in the past I now only recommend people I've actually spent a lot of time with. Which means if you're in Akron, Tokyo, San Francisco, Cedar Rapids, Milwaukee or Houston I can recommend a Zen teacher for you. Otherwise you're on your own.

This also dovetails into the reason why I don't want to publicly denounce Mr. Graham now. It's quite evident to me that I was being used by someone who wanted me to vouch for his legitimacy. He was successful. I was stupid.

Now other people want to use me to vouch for that same person's illegitimacy. They want to use my fame (such as it is) for their purposes just like he did.

But I think the people who are wanting me to denounce Mr. Graham are already doing a fine job of it and do not need my help.

I've already played more of a role in this story than I wanted to. So I'm getting out while the getting's good.

If you click on "very cool blog", on either Brad's SG article or Kevin's quote of it in his blog, it says: "You can rename your account with this username". I thought Kevin might be interested in doing that.

Kevin is a good guy.. He just has to resist the temptation to go all tabloid.

Kevin, You're doing good work but just stick to the facts. Leave the harsh remarks to the comments section. If you feel you must speculate, be cool!.. You see what Brad said about the situation @10:47? He pretty much hung Barry out to dry without really trying. It was totally awesome. The facts will speak for themselves.

All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measure, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you – begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifest in the Buddhas.

I thought koan practice in the Soto sect only began with Harada Roshi. (Of Hoshin-ji)"

SURE!:)

from wiki pages...

The Soto sect has a strong historical connection with kōans many kōan collections were compiled by Soto priests. During the 13th century, Dōgen, founder of the Soto sect in Japan, compiled some 300 kōans in the volumes known as the Greater Shōbōgenzō. Other kōan collections compiled and annotated by Soto priests include The Iron Flute (Japanese: Tetteki Tosui, compiled by Genro in 1783) and Verses and Commentaries on One Hundred Old Cases of Tenchian (Japanese: Tenchian hyakusoku hyoju, compiled by Tetsumon in 1771.) However, according to Michael Mohr, "...kōan practice was largely expunged from the Soto school through the efforts of Gento Sokuchu (1729–1807), the eleventh abbot of Entsuji, who in 1795 was nominated abbot of Eiheiji".

Basically, the Soto school has inherited a lot of not so old prejudices...

(there is a lot of this sort of thing out there... scholars today agree that the Soto/Rinzai beef has been overstated... Why else do you think that the early founders of the Sanbo-Kyodan were Soto monks?)

And from my experience... Rinzai/SK teachers speak of Dogen in pretty glowing terms.The way Dogen talks about the various koans in his Shobogenzo, Rinzai/SK teachers see it as teisho's - the highly symbolic poetics you could find in any koan collection.

In the words of Dr Evil - "...we are not so different you and i Mr Powers..." ^^

"Tanahashi, who now lives in Berkeley, will be joined next weekend by an impressive array of scholars, artists and poets gathering in San Francisco for a series of public events celebrating the book's publication. There will be meditation instructions and a film about Dogen at the Zen Center, a panel and musical performance at Fort Mason Center, and a meditation and Sunday dharma talk (Buddhist sermon) at Green Gulch Farm at Muir Beach. (For a list of events, go to www.sfzc.org/ztf.)

"Treasury of the True Dharma Eye" (Shambhala Publications; $150) is a monumental accomplishment, bringing together Dogen's essays on the essence of Buddhist teaching and detailed instructions on how to meditate or lead a monastic life, not to mention this medieval monk's paradoxical ponderings on the nature of time and space. "

Though you understand I am interested in the actual practice of considering a koan during zazen.

It seems to me really stupid (or in the least strange, since the claim is raised by men I could hardly imagine to be stupid) to conclude from the fact that Dogen wanted people and particularly his disciples to understand the stories used as koans, that he was in favor of the practice itself.

Even Christ would have wanted people to understand the stories in the Bible. It doesn't mean he was in support of koan practice.

It seems one has to be really insincere to raise such a claim.

I've had a look at your link and I'll look at it further later. I am an ESL and I might need to do some dictionarying. Though some the claims do not seem very convincing. It seems to me very difficult to call Menzan prejudiced. I read some of his stuff and it seems to be what I like, though this is beside the point.

And one other thing Zach, if I think whose opinion I'd be interested in as for what you posted, it'd be Mike Cross. I think there’s an e-mail address at his blog. Perhaps I'll try and see what he has to say.

- And one other unrelated thing, - if I try and think [- which I did] who would I ask about all the things brad has to say about Genpo, - it'd be Nishijima. Nothing to do with the fact he has anything to do with Brad. But I could hardly suppose he'd say anything about it.

Anyone who is interested in deconstructing the latter day polarized myth of Soto vs Rinzai, and the not-so-latter day reasons as to maybe why these differences were originally assigned retrospectively, could do worse than flicking through John McRae's 'Seeing Through Zen'. The book has it's problems and questionable moments, but it presents a useful perspective on how lineage and the mirage of a continuity of weighty 'lineage tradition' is often implied retrospectively on what is really a more complex history.

It's all about validating things with the 'lineage' brand. We seem to need and prize this... eh, Dogo?

Did you read the footnotes from the other book i linked - Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation where it has Dogen's successor Keizan

Ah, this is not quite right. Koans were always important in Soto Zen, but that is not the same as Kanna Zen. In Zazen Yojinki, Keizan recommends focusing on a Koan uring Zazen ... ONLY when one is having trouble to settle down. It is just one item in a pretty long list.If your mind is disturbed [during Zazen], rest it on the tip of the nose or below the navel and count your inhaled and exhaled breath. If your mind still is not calm, take a Koan and concentrate on it. For example consider these non-taste the stories: "Who is this that comes before me?" (Hui-neng); "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" (Chao-chou); Yun men's Mt Sumeru and Chao-chou's oak tree in the garden. These are available applications. If your mind is still disturbed, sit and concentrate on the moment your breath has stopped and both eyes have closed forever, or on the unborn state in your mother's womb or before one thought arises. If you do this, the two Sunyatas (non-ego) will emerge, and the disturbed mind will be put at rests.

When you arise from meditation and unconsciously take action, that action is itself a Koan. Without entering into relation, when you accomplish practice and enlightenment, the Koan manifests itself. State before the creation of heaven and earth, condition of empty kalpa, and wondrous functions and most important thing of Buddhas and patriarchs - all these are one thing, zazen.

We must quit thinking dualistically and put a stop to our delusive mind, cool our passions, transcend moment and eternity, make our mind like cold ashes and withered trees, unify meditation and wisdom like a censer in an old shrine, and purify body and mind like a single white strand. I sincerely hope that you will do all this.

But the point is that it was used in Soto Zen and not completely without merit, as orthodox Soto like to think. IMO it informs Dogen.:)

Koan PRACTICE - as opposed to koan STUDY.

I love this:"When you arise from meditation and unconsciously take action, that action is itself a Koan. Without entering into relation, when you accomplish practice and enlightenment, the Koan manifests itself. State before the creation of heaven and earth, condition of empty kalpa, and wondrous functions and most important thing of Buddhas and patriarchs - all these are one thing, zazen."

Perhaps you have said so elsewhere, but I am curious: why are you so keen on trying to point out a connection between Brad and BG? Do you believe Brad should have known BG was a bogus teacher? Do you think he should have thoroughly researched him before mentioning him in his blog post/article? I think it is entirely possible that every single one of us has a photo lurking around facebook or elsewhere featuring us posing with someone who later on turned out to be an unsavory character. As you have said before, BG seems to be a slippery character, so why do you seem surprised if Brad was also hoodwinked the few times he met BG? Just curious.